One Big Mac equals 350,000 mouse clicks

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Slideshows. Thousands of slideshows. That's how you can burn off all of those excess calories you ingested when you opted to swing through McDonald's on the way home instead of cooking dinner for yourself. According a recent publication of Convert Anything to Calories, one Big Mac is the caloric equivialent of 350,000 mouse clicks.

That morsel of knowledge was part of a larger exploration of the effects of caloric knowledge on human decision making. In a recent study, people were given menus, some of which contained the caloric value of the items. Even further, some of those caloric values came with an estimated distance you'd have to walk to burn the meal off. Unsurprisingly, people who knew the caloric values opted for healthier meals.

People who viewed the menu without nutritional information ordered a meal totaling 1,020 calories, on average, significantly more than the average 826 calories ordered by those who viewed menus that included information about walking-distance. Study participants ordered meals adding up to averages of 927 calories and 916 calories from menus with only calorie information or calorie information plus minutes walking, respectively, although the differences between these two totals were not statistically significant. [Scientific American]